Re: MD Begging the Question, Moral Intuitions, and Answering the Nazi, Part III

From: Steve Peterson (peterson.steve@verizon.net)
Date: Tue Oct 14 2003 - 23:21:58 BST

  • Next message: MATTHEW PAUL KUNDERT: "Re: MD Begging the Question, Moral Intuitions, and Answering the Nazi, Part III"

    Hi Matt,

    > Steve said:
    > I think you are betraying the materialist assumption that stands within your
    > version of pragmatism. Why does it make sense for rocks and tigers to cause
    > you to believe things but you can't accept DQ? What is intuitive and obvious
    > about rocks, that DQ is lacking?
    >
    > Matt:
    > Nah, it has nothing to do with a materialist assumption. Remember,
    > pragmatists don't make assumptions about the way the world really is.

    I really don't buy that. If you're not talking about the world then what
    could you be talking about? See below.

    Matt:
    >But
    > this is actually neither here nor there in this case. First, I didn't make a
    > difference between rocks and DQ, it was between rocks and morals. And the
    > difference is between that which is easily agreed on and that which isn't.
    > This is an empirical claim. The Nazis agreed as much as anybody about
    > physics. Morality is where the trouble arose.

    > Steve said:
    > Anyway, if DQ does not make Pirsig's MOQ a better explanatory tool for you,
    > then I guess as a good pragmatist you should reject the MOQ as you have. I
    > still don't see why Pirsig is a bad pragmatist for including DQ which many of
    > us find to be helpful in describing experience.
    >
    > Matt:
    > I think people are very confused but what I was trying to do in my series of
    > posts. I was attempting a reconstruction of Pirsig's philosophy from his
    > texts. I was doing what, the other day, I called biography, as opposed to
    > philosophy. Most of your questions so far, I think, have made the assumption
    > that I was doing philosophy. DMB and Platt, I think, did the same thing.
    > That wasn't my purpose. I interspliced periodically what the pragmatist
    > thinks about some of the claims I think Pirsig is making, but the purpose of
    > the posts was to get at what I think Pirsig thinks he is doing. I said
    > nothing about my own opinions about DQ, in fact, I have no problem with DQ
    > properly pragmatized. Its not that Pirsig is a bad pragmatist for including
    > DQ, he's a bad pragmatist for making a distinction between mediated experience
    > and unmediated experience. The pragmatist thinks this way of describing
    > experience creates a lot of unneeded conceptual problems, problems that the
    > pragmati
    > st thinks he can clear away and still explain experience just as well, if not
    > better.

    Steve:
    I don't see how a pragmatist who "don't make assumptions" could possibly
    explain anything since we established that reasoning must begin with
    assumptions. It would seem that pragmatism as you describe it can only be a
    negative philosophy. All it seems to be good for is saying, "Hey, you're
    not being a good pragmatist" (or "you're begging the question.")

    Thanks,
    Steve

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